Industrial process control and automation systems are typically used to monitor and control complex and potentially volatile industrial processes without interruption, often running without scheduled downtime for years. Over time, a need may arise to upgrade one or more components in an industrial process control and automation system. This could be due to various factors, such as the desire to obtain improvements provided by new products or the need to replace obsolete products or address support issues. It is often necessary or desirable to perform an upgrade “on-process,” meaning there are little or no interruptions of the control routines used by the system to control the underlying industrial processes. Ideally, this allows the system to continuously or near-continuously monitor and control the underlying industrial processes during the upgrade.